The flood was God’s command (or ctrl)+A Delete. Except he
saved the best paragraph to help form the coming story. God took his most
righteous man and his family and some animals and preserved them to restart
earth. There are a lot of parallels between God’s commission to Adam and God’s
commission to Noah and his family. Go. Be fruitful and multiply. The earth is yours
to rule over. The plants and animals are yours to eat. Except… where there was
once a garden of perfection, now there was sin. This time God knew that evil
was part of the world before the flood, and evil would be part of the world
until Heaven came to Earth.
In the midst of recovering from destruction and tragedy God
makes a promise. A promise that he will never erase his masterpiece again to
start over. God sent his rainbow after the flood. That rainbow is a symbol of
his war bow forever put away, never again pointing to earth. Never again… even
though man will forever be sinful and fallen and continue toward evil. God
would never again destroy his earth and creation but instead send a Rescuer to
save them. It was God’s wrath that brought the flood and God’s perfect love
that bring our Rescue.
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Love the 'war bow' analogy. One thought I had, as a detailed oriented individual, is that God promised via the rainbow to never destroy the Earth again with a flood (despite how messed up we still are). This does not eliminate other methods though. This Earth will be destroyed at some point because a New Earth will take up residence. We just are assured that it will not be from water and a total destruction from flooding.
ReplyDeleteThe word for new in Greek is "kainos" which indicates a renewed earth rather than a brand new earth. It is creation restored. What God created and called very good is never finally abandoned so He can start over fresh somewhere else - otherwise what is the point in all of this redemption?
ReplyDelete